nothingtoodoo

Terence Koh is either marching slowly on his knees around a giant pile of salt crystals, or resting on his stomach at its edge before getting up to march again, in an unceasing cycle. The five-week-long performance-installation at Mary Boone gallery, titled "nothingtoodoo," takes the form of a perpetual, pointless ritual of self-punishment. It has some of the signatures of Koh's multifaceted body of work — most notably, everything is white, from the giant salt mound to the loose uniform that Koh is wearing. Terence Koh bears the distinction of being associated with "bling conceptualism" (a term, I'm told, coined by Ossian Ward in an article referencing a Koh installation that incorporated the artist's own gold-covered turds, reportedly sold for half a million dollars at Art Basel in 2006). Characteristic of the pre-2008 bubble years, bling conceptualism describes an aesthetic that melds anti-art attitude with a sense for surface pulled from fashion and design. Dan Colen or Luis Gispert come to mind, but Koh is king. - Ben Davis